Marketing debate

I found myself in a very interesting conversation the other day whilst manning my bar that I work in. A man called Simon Filler who is a freelancer who's roles include, Head of Marketing for Arc Inspirations and a few other companies based in London. He sat down on his own, I recommended him with a drink and he sat down at the bar and we started to chat. Soon after we were in that typical debate about PR being part of the marketing mix and the limits with PR according to the greater scheme of things.

I was surprised to the level to which I was standing up for PR, maybe I'm really getting stuck into it. I even silenced him once or twice with points about product placement being advertising, to which he thought was PR. Then his friend arrived sat down cottoned on to what we were talking about and laughed. Simon looked at him at they both started to laugh, seems they were surprised to be going out to a bar and finding a bar tender who new a thing or two about their profession. The other guy, forgive me I didn't get his name, was high up in marketing for the NHS.

The debate thickened mostly around product placement, the wider marketing mix and the role PR has in the modern world. Apparently PR is dying. Anyway there isn't any real ending to this post, except to say that I finally feel like I've grown up a bit, and that these academics and practitioners aren't as scary as first thought. We all have views that have validity and it doesn't matter how much experience someone has there is always something to learn from another.